the quest for the perfect banana muffin: attempt #1, healthy banana muffins with passionfruit icing

incomplete post.

Surfing the net a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for an alleged simple, moist and delicious banana muffin. Now, I don't like actual bananas, but bananas in food and drinks are great. And after Christmas, I was craving banana muffins/cupcakes more and more. Chel's cupcakes were a little sweet, but lovely and moist and yummy! I was already going out that day to fetch a few things, and so I decided to pick up a few things for the muffins as well. Now, me being me - I did not bookmark the page (or shut down my computer properly, thus not recording it in my browser history) so on my return, when I was itching to start baking, I could not find it!

Taking a quick look on the net, I found a replacement recipe and decided to try it. There was no harm in it after all. It had no butter or oil in the recipe, and had less sugar. So it was a "healthier" alternative to traditional banana muffins.

As I am Dyan, and Dyan doesn't really tend to follow instructions properly, I made adjustments to the recipe as I saw fit (and based on what ingredients I had on hand). You can find the original muffin recipe here at Group Recipes and the icing recipe originates from the Love Food recipe book series.

Just a few notes on how mine turned out, they were a little dense and dry - I will work on getting them lighter, with a touch more moisture next time around (maybe by adding a form of liquid other than eggs, or just adding another egg). The flavour of the bananas didn't come through too well as the only bananas I could find were the ones that were just ripe. Not a single ripened banana could be found in the fruit market when I went. And I do implore that you use a thick yoghurt, not a skimpy, thin fat free yoghurt for the icing.

Here's what the original recipe with my amendments.

INGREDIENTS

makes 18 muffins 10 jumbo muffins

Muffins:

• 2 3 beaten eggs
• 3 4 very ripe mashed bananas
• 2 cups plain flour self-raising flour (my mother doesn't accurately label containers, so I was unsure about what kind of flour I had on hand, although I was assuming it was plain flour)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (there was also no baking soda in the house, so I thought they'd turn out mega flat)
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

Icing:

• 1 2 passionfriuts worth of pulp
• ? cups icing sugar
• ? cups plain yoghurt vanilla flavoured, 98% fat free yoghurt

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 175C
• Prepare muffin tin/s

Muffins:

• Mash up the bananas
• Add the eggs and mix until combined
• Mix all the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl
• Stir the banana mixture in with the dry ingredients
• Divide the batter amongst your prepared muffin cups (remember, muffins rise a lot so don't fill up each muffin cup completely 3/4 should be fine. unless you're fairly sure that it won't rise due to a lack of self-raising flour or baking soda)
• Chuck them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick poked in the centre of a muffin comes out clean